Not Quite Ever After
by Laura Schiller
Summary: The untold story of Rachel's loss, Mrs. Haloway's victory, and one prison guard's fateful decision. Based on my theory that Rachel's Thomas and Thomas the guard are one person.


Not Quite Ever After

By Laura Schiller

Based on the Delirium Trilogy

Copyright: Lauren Oliver

_Think about the salary,_ Thomas McNamara told himself, wrinkling his nose at the unspeakable stench coming from the doors of Ward Six of Portland's Correctional Facility. _Think about finally moving out of our little shoebox on Forsyth Street, a real house with an extra room for Jimmy. _But that didn't help either, because waxing emotional about his baby son inside this fortress of the law just made him feel guilty.

"Pretty, ain't it?" said Frank Dormand, showing him a mouthful of nicotine-yellowed teeth. "Now, you going to stand here all day, or follow me?"

"Coming, sir."

Thomas smoothed his brand-new security uniform, adjusted his badge, and followed his so-called superior along their rounds.

He tried to pay attention to the rules being rattled off – feeding at six, twelve and eighteen-hundred hours; lights out at twenty-two-hundred; showers every Sunday; no conversation between cells (_Is that even possible?_ thought Thomas, eyeing the thick doors with their tiny barred windows) – but the smell, a mixture of body fluids, cigarettes, mildew and Frank's cologne, made it difficult to breathe, let alone listen.

_It's honorable work, boy,_ his father had told him when he was assigned to this post. _For the good of our country. _It was a surprisingly small comfort. His head swam.

"You okay, kid?"

He froze. The speaker was not Frank, still shuffling along in front of him, but a woman; hoarse, rough, but definitely female. Thomas looked around for the source of the voice, and saw –

Two green eyes, staring back at him from behind the nearest cell window.

"Dear God," he whispered.

They were Rachel's eyes: green as new grass, so bright they almost glowed, even in the dank, filthy darkness of the Crypts. Even four years later, even cured, he would know them anywhere. Surely she wan't … ?

A moment later, he came to his senses. Of course this wasn't Rachel Tiddle. Judging by her hollow, wrinkled face and the stringy gray hair stuck to her forehead, she looked about forty years older. Not that long-term inmates, especially of the dissident ward, ever looked their ages.

"Fresh meat coming through," she rasped, smirking at him. "Welcome to the Crypts, kid. Don't worry, you won't notice the smell after a few days."

"No nonessential contact with the prisoners," Frank barked, poking him with the butt of his rifle. "That means _shut up_!" He used the same rifle to get an ominous _boom!_ out of the green-eyed woman's door. She only laughed and withdrew, her head vanishing from sight like a fairy tale witch's.

"Who _is_ she?" Thomas asked.

"Her? Man, where have you been living, under a rock? That's Annabel Haloway!"

"_The_ Annabel Haloway?" The most notorious terrorist in living memory. Thomas found that strangely difficult to reconcile with her irony, her alertness, and the way she'd asked if he was okay.

"I'm telling you," Frank gloated, obviously thrilled to have such a high-profile 'guest' lodging in his workplace.

"She … she _talked._" Thomas felt silly the moment he'd said it, as if talking were a miracle, but the fact was that all day, none of the other moaning, screaming or muttering prisoners had said so much as one coherent sentence.

"She does that." Frank nodded sagely, like a scientist explaining the behavior of a research specimen. "Better get used to it. She's either tough as nails or batshit insane, maybe even both. Oh, and if you catch her with an old metal pin, just ignore it."

"A pin?" If he hadn't been confused before, now he definitely was. "But sir, the code says no personal posessions – "

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Frank spat into a corner with serene unconcern. "But since she almost strangled the last guy who tried to take it, we figured, why bother? It's not sharp or anything. Can't hurt us, can't even hurt herself. All it does is remind her of her old _deliria_ carrier. She uses it to scratch on the walls. Serve her right."

"Her _deliria_ carrier?"

"Her own husband. He died years ago. An army officer, can you believe it? The pin was a service medal. Just goes to show that even our best families ain't safe." Frank fingered his own ID badge complacently, as if his own good conduct would ensure that it never met the same fate.

Thomas shuddered. How strong would the disease have to be, to leave her defending a worthless pin years after its owner's death? But on ther other hand, how strong _she_ must be, still sane and in fighting form. He believed she was sane, at least. She was too sarcastic to be crazy. _Welcome_, indeed.

Rachel's eyes in that wasted face were a sight that would haunt him to his dying day.

/

_Four years ago:_

Rachel Tiddle's green eyes sparkled with joy as she launched herself into Thomas' arms, knocking him off-balance so that he had to lift her and spin her around. They were at their hiding-place, a meadow of waist-high grass that had once been a farm on the outskirts of the city. The barn nearby was the underground concert hall/speakeasy/illegal library where they had first met, where she had taught him to dance in his sock-feet and he had taught her how to project her voice to read her fairytales for the crowd. Since then, these stolen afternoons with her had been the happiest time of their lives – which was exactly why Thomas' heart ached so much as he detched her gently from his arms.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Rachel, I … "

"_What?_"

"I'm getting cured next week. I … I came here to say goodbye. I'm sorry, Rachel, I'm so sorry!"

He hated the way her eyes darkened with pain, like the withering of fresh leaves. Being Rachel, however, she argued with him as stubbornly as ever, refusing to give up hope, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt to pull him close.

"Run away with me," she pleaded. "We can go to the Wilds. I've got relatives out there, they'll take us in, and we'd never have to hide again - "

"You think I want that sort of life for you? Scrabbling in the forest like an animal, with your talent, your intelligence? And that's just if we make it past the guards, _and_ the dogs, _and_ the electric fence! This isn't one of your stories, Rachel. It doesn't have a happy ever after. We've got to face that."

"You're a coward." Her voice was deadly quiet, her breath hot in his face. "You're just tired of me, that's all, but you won't admit it."

"How can you even – " The absurdity of the idea almost choked him, but looking down at her – seeing how her thin veneer of anger was all that kept her from collapsing – his own anger fizzled, like a bonfire in a sudden fall of rain.

"Believe what you want," he said, with a defeated sigh. "Just … take care, okay? Try to be happy."

"As if we could!" She let go of his shirt as if it burned her, almost shoving him backward. "Isn't that the point of being cured?"

They walked away in opposite directions, down the winding path that coonnected the roads on either side of the meadow. Just before he reached his road, he heard her calling something, in a wild, high voice like the call of some lonely bird.

_"I love you, remember? They can't - " _The rest, he could not hear, and so he did not answer.

/

_Present day:_

Thomas had a secret. His cure didn't take.

He'd suspected it from the first time he'd held his baby boy. His throat had seized up, an uncommon warmth had lit him up from the inside out, and he could have stood for hours in that hospital hallway, counting his son's twenty tiny fingers and toes, looking down into his beautiful eyes. Instead he'd brusquely handed the child back to the nurse and gone to check on his wife.

He knew it for a certainty at Rachel's wedding.

It was the first time he'd seen her since that last day in the meadow. While he had been married, expecting and then raising a child, battling his low board scores and unconventional attitude to hold down a job, she had gone through university and graduated with honors. Today, she and her assigned pair were finally joining the rest of their high school yearmates in the sanctity of marriage.

Thomas did not look up as Rachel's gown rustled by him, down the aisle of Saint Cormac's New Trinity Church. He kept his eyes resolutely on the altar, with its hand-and-molecule symbol embroidered in silver on blue cloth, the only colorful thing in the massive concrete hall.

He saw them only from a distance: Rachel in white, her wild brown curls pinned into a crown around her head. The faceless groom (some computer guy, Thomas vaguely remembered), blond and tuxedoed, barely taller than Rachel herself. Pastor Eugene's lab-coat-inspired uniform, also pure white, blindingly white in the sunbeams from the skylight, droning away. _In sickness and in health. 'Til death do us part. _Thomas hadn't realized there were so many depressing words in the marriage service.

Rachel's "I do" rang out for the whole congregation to hear. The church had excellent acoustics.

"I wouldn't wear an empire waist if I was her," Thomas' wife Ella declared, hiding a yawn between gloved fingers. "She doesn't have the figure for it."

_For pity's sake, woman, she was your best friend! _Thomas nearly snarled, reembering how Rachel and Ella used to race each other down the street, squealing and giggling. Ella's wicked smile as she smuggled love letters between Thomas and Rachel. Her bewilderment – _There's got to be a mistake, Tom!_ – when he was paired with her instead of Rachel. How had things gone so wrong?

"Do you think Jimmy's okay?" Thomas whispered, hoping to lead to a safe topic. "This is the first time we've left him alone – "

Ella rolled her eyes. "He'll be fine."

"Are you sure Lena's friend knows how to babysit? She's only thirteen."

"Oh, give it a rest."

At that point, Rachel and her groom walked past, sedately holding hands. For the first and only time, Thomas looked up at Rachel's eyes.

He remembered them warm and bright and sparking, green as the first buds of spring. Today, on her wedding day, they were the blank and sterile color of a hospital room.

_So the prince's sword broke into pieces, and the princess stayed asleep in her glass coffin for all eternity. And they lived safely, cleanly and rationally ever after. How's that for a fairy tale to tell Jimmy when he's older?_

"Now what's the matter?" asked Ella, handing him a kleenex from her purse.

"Don't know. Maybe it's the incense, makes my eyes water."

/

Later that night, Jimmy's inconsolable wailing echoed through the apartment like the cries of a ghost. Their neighbor had already banged on the wall to warn them to shut the baby up. Thomas glanced at Ella across the gap between their beds. She was staring at the ceiling, the covers pulled up to her chin. He moved to get up.

"Let him yell," she ordered. "He'll get tired soon enough."

"But he's – "

"It's in the _Book of Shhh_. It's the only way he'll learn to sleep through the night."

Thomas gritted his teeth. He felt the _deliria_ rising in his blood, pulling him toward his son like a magnet. The urge to comfort him was like hunger, like the instinct to breathe. He had long since given up trying to fight it. If it was going to kill him, he'd be dead already, wouldn't he?

"You _know_ Mr. Lee will evict us if we keep disturbing the neighbors," he argued instead, throwing off the blankets and crossing the room in what felt like one move.

He picked up Jimmy from his crib, lifted him over his shoulder and began to pace up and down, keeping up a stream of whispers in the baby's ear. It was illogical, but at times it was the only thing that calmed him down.

"Here, buddy. Dad's here. Now, what's wrong? I know you're not hungry, I know you don't need your diaper changed, we did that five minutes ago. Why can't you sleep, hmm? You should know better by now, big guy."

Jimmy's screams faded to sobs, then hiccups, then the odd little gurgle or squeal. He took hold of Thomas' pyjama collar with one chubby hand, as if to assure himself that his father wasn't going away.

"Curtains," Ella interrupted.

"Right." Still holding the baby with one hand, Thomas pulled the window curtains closed with the other. Not that passing patrols would ba able to see much from the fourth floor, but better safe than sorry.

"You're better at this than I am," she said. "The whole … parenting thing, I mean."

Looking back at his wife in the dark room, a shadow with wavy hair and a low, soft voice voice, he could almost imagine she was someone else. He immediately forced that thought away, since it was unfair to both of them. Still, she sounded unlike herself, unlike the daytime Ella he had of necessity learned to get along with. She sounded wistful, almost envious. As if her disgraceful husband was someone she wouldn't mind resembling.

"Would you like to hold him?" he offered.

"No … no."

He did not argue further, but when he began to sing (an old DFA Youth Guard anthem about heroic pilots during the blitz, which struck him as inappropriate, but was the only song he could think of), she quietly, tentavitely, joined in.

Before they reached the last verse, Jimmy fell asleep.

/

_Four years later:_

"Love," Thomas muttered, shaking his head in wonder at the scribbles on Annabel Haloway's walls. "Why just the one word? Why not something else?"

Frank was on a cigarette break, which made it a convenient opportunity to ask her some questions. At least that was what he told himself, to disguise the rampant curiosity he'd had since he first saw her.

"What else is there?" Annabel replied, watching him from the tangle of her blanket like a bat from inside its cave.

He picked up her empty food tray, the only reason he was inside the cell to begin with. As the newest recruit, Frank and his co-workers fobbed off chores inside the cells to him as often as possible, out of revulsion (and, in some cases, fear) of the prisoners. He was the only one who knew the extent of Annabel's mad artwork.

"Who do you love, boy?" she asked.

The proper answer, the expected answer, would have been: _Nobody, of course._ He was a good citizen – and a good liar, which often amounted to the same thing. But there was no lying to this woman, this feral and yet all-too-human creature who could have been family. He had looked up her file. Annabel Haloway had two daughters, Rachel Carol and Magdalena Ella, whose birthdays matched those of the girls he knew. In a world without the cure (_a better world,_ whispered his disease), this green-eyed terrorist could have been his mother-in-law.

How did she know? How did she see right through him like this?

"My son," he answered.

"Good, good. Very good." She flashed him a lopsided, rotten-toothed smile.

"And whom do _you_ love, Mrs. Haloway?" he replied, just to feel a little less exposed under her scrutiny.

"My husband. My daughters."

She held her head high, the military pin gleaming at the collar of her gray jumpsuit. For only a moment, he caught a glimpse of the woman she might have been: strong and elegant, her beautiful daughters by her side like a general's seconds-in-command.

He followed her gaze to the opposite corner of the wall, where she had scratched LOVE in letters as high as her waist. For the first time, he realized just how deeply they were carved – the hole inside the O looked precarious, as if the rotten old stone was ready to crumble. And if it did, a very small, very thin, very determined woman just might fit through.

He should have been horrified, but at the moment, all he could feel was a profound respect, for ten long years of determination and cunning.

He could be cunning, too.

"Hey, did you hear about the budget cuts?" he said casually. "I hear they've been turning off the electric fences all over the country, to save power." Pause. "Here, too. Midnight to five p.m."

All right, maybe not so cunning. He felt about as suble as Frank's rifle butt. Thank God they couldn't afford surveillance cameras in the cells anymore, or he'd be done for.

Annabel smiled again and touched his sleeve; bony fingers and ragged nails aside, as gentle as a mother could be.

"God bless you, Thomas McNamara," she murmured, the first and last time she'd ever use his name. "Your son's a lucky boy."

Only then did it hit him, the enormity of what he was doing in turning a blind eye to the notorious Haloway's jailbreak. If anyone found out, he might never even see his boy again. Jimmy, four years old, his small forehead furrowed with confusion, asking everybody where his Daddy was and why he couldn't see him. Thomas broke into a cold sweat at the thought. He couldn't do it.

But neither could he betray Rachel's mother to the nonexistent mercy of Frank Dormand.

"When you get out," he whispered. "Try to make this world a better place. For my boy, for your daughters, for everyone. If anyone can do it, you can. Please, Mrs. Haloway, promise me you'll try."

_I'm sorry, Rachel. You were right, I was a coward. But it's never too late to learn to be brave._

_We may not live happily after ... but we will_**live.**


End file.
